Snooping Increasing Exponentially
More invasion of privacy news (there's been a rash of it lately, and it's itchy) --- we can add the DOD and NSA to the domestic snoop list.
- NBC's Investigative Unit reported that, a DOD database includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. The DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons, and indicates they are monitoring even the vehicles which visit the protest areas in an attempt to identify individuals engaging in LAWFUL, Constitutionally-protected protest.
- TALON ("Threat and Local Observation Notice") reports now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests.
- NBC's Investigative Unit reported that, "CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity) is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its operational and analytical records include reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies. (And fluffy, non-violent Quakers....)
- One of the CIFA-funded database projects is called "Person Search", and searches not only government sources, but commercial databases as well.
- According to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract, CIFA's "Insider Threat Initiative", is supposedly designed to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats, as well as the ability to identify and document normal and abnormal activities and behaviors." (They're documenting NORMAL behavior too?? WTF???)
- The NY Times reported that under a Presidential order signed in 2002, the NSA (which is SUPPOSED to be tasked to snooping solely on foreign chatter, not Americans) has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people INSIDE the United States without warrants over the past three years. The Chimp-in-Chief admitted to this stunning overreach and abuse of power by claiming it "Saves lives" while simultaneously offering no actual examples of a single life saved by reckless intrusion.
- Vets traumatized by war, now also get to be traumatized by the TSA and perhaps barred from flying. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, "PTSD" otherwise known as "shell shock" affects as many as 17% of vets returning from Iraq in 204 alone. More than half, or 53 percent, of the 1 million combat veterans of Vietnam were afflicted to one degree or another, said a four-year, $9 million study published by the VA in 1990. This week it was revealed that the agency is putting their names in a database and classifying them as "mental defectives". The TSA notice, first reported by Government Security News, reads: "Examples of new data sources would be DoD files for military service histories or VA files for lists of persons who have been declared mental defectives." Hmm... Now where have I heard that phrase before? Oh yeah. The Nazis used to call mentally ill people that right before they killed them. They were the first people the Nazis killed. You know, before they really got the hang of killing jews and faggots.
- TSA plans to add two new "data sources" per year to it's little database.
- The FBI quietly announced via the Federal Register on Dec. 2 that it was putting the Terrorist Screening Records System beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
"It's absolute paranoia at the highest levels of our government," says Hersh of The Truth Project.
And beyond the ethical implications, the PRACTICAL problem here is that there is so much data mining going on, that the government is going to be buried in irrelevancy, and miss the REAL threats because it simply can't process all the data sufficiently, much less analyse it with any sort of accuracy. This is one of the reasons why 9/11 happened in the first place -- too much data, no coordination and too few people with a brain to put the pieces together to stop it. Now the Bush Administration has only exaccerbated the problem.
This is totally out of control.
- NBC's Investigative Unit reported that, a DOD database includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. The DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons, and indicates they are monitoring even the vehicles which visit the protest areas in an attempt to identify individuals engaging in LAWFUL, Constitutionally-protected protest.
- TALON ("Threat and Local Observation Notice") reports now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests.
- NBC's Investigative Unit reported that, "CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity) is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its operational and analytical records include reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies. (And fluffy, non-violent Quakers....)
- One of the CIFA-funded database projects is called "Person Search", and searches not only government sources, but commercial databases as well.
- According to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract, CIFA's "Insider Threat Initiative", is supposedly designed to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats, as well as the ability to identify and document normal and abnormal activities and behaviors." (They're documenting NORMAL behavior too?? WTF???)
- The NY Times reported that under a Presidential order signed in 2002, the NSA (which is SUPPOSED to be tasked to snooping solely on foreign chatter, not Americans) has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people INSIDE the United States without warrants over the past three years. The Chimp-in-Chief admitted to this stunning overreach and abuse of power by claiming it "Saves lives" while simultaneously offering no actual examples of a single life saved by reckless intrusion.
- Vets traumatized by war, now also get to be traumatized by the TSA and perhaps barred from flying. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, "PTSD" otherwise known as "shell shock" affects as many as 17% of vets returning from Iraq in 204 alone. More than half, or 53 percent, of the 1 million combat veterans of Vietnam were afflicted to one degree or another, said a four-year, $9 million study published by the VA in 1990. This week it was revealed that the agency is putting their names in a database and classifying them as "mental defectives". The TSA notice, first reported by Government Security News, reads: "Examples of new data sources would be DoD files for military service histories or VA files for lists of persons who have been declared mental defectives." Hmm... Now where have I heard that phrase before? Oh yeah. The Nazis used to call mentally ill people that right before they killed them. They were the first people the Nazis killed. You know, before they really got the hang of killing jews and faggots.
- TSA plans to add two new "data sources" per year to it's little database.
- The FBI quietly announced via the Federal Register on Dec. 2 that it was putting the Terrorist Screening Records System beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.
"It's absolute paranoia at the highest levels of our government," says Hersh of The Truth Project.
And beyond the ethical implications, the PRACTICAL problem here is that there is so much data mining going on, that the government is going to be buried in irrelevancy, and miss the REAL threats because it simply can't process all the data sufficiently, much less analyse it with any sort of accuracy. This is one of the reasons why 9/11 happened in the first place -- too much data, no coordination and too few people with a brain to put the pieces together to stop it. Now the Bush Administration has only exaccerbated the problem.
This is totally out of control.
posted by CTF Editor at
5:27 AM
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